When I watch aikido videos I never think 'this is a realistic attack and the person uke is doing everything he can to defend himself'. Indeed, if that was the case aikido would look better with inexperienced ukes rather than experienced ukes surely?!

When you watch Ueshiba I believe almost all the time he is illustrating the use of blending, rather than showing a realistic defence. However, it is the rare occasions where an uke does something unexpected where the real ability of Ueshiba is shown, in that he can instantly adapt and can throw quite quickly and powerfully (yet with little effort). I did not see any of these such occasions presented because the ukes pretty much seemed to fit in well with what was happening, so in my opinion it is very hard to say anything either positive or negative about this other than it looked nice as a demo.

It's always wrong to confuse dojo training with real attacks. I believe when you train you should understand what you are training to achieve, and thus can put it in context (hence my signature). I didn't particularly feel like I learnt anything from the video, but maybe it would have been different if I'd had some supporting oral tuition from him as well.

Thus, although my sentiments edge towards those of Szczepan (whom I see as a great advocate in the war against politically correct hippies), I would reserve my judgement for now.